JEOL T300 electron microscopeThe king of microscopes comes to us from our friends on Ebay. This is a JEOL T-300 and was used daily at Owens Corning for 20 years when it was replaced. It can magnify up to 200,000x but realistically the image on these older machines gets pretty fuzzy after 50k.

JEOL 6300F electron microscope Besides just magnifying images, this system has a Kevex x-ray analysis probe. X-rays are emitted from the specimen due to the electron bombardment. The x-ray wavelength is characteristic of the element that produces it. An added bonus is that the beam can be controlled in a step wise manner to create a map of the elements across the specimen.

Update: 5-2006

Well of course if you have one electron microscope then two would be better! Because I just want more stress in my life, I went out and bought a very high performance JEOL 6300F as military surplus. The deal was too good to pass up BUT they beat it with a hammer before releasing it for sale. Incredibly they missed all the important stuff and I believe I can get it working. This instrument has 1.5 nanometer resolution which is about 50 times better than the first SEM. Stay tuned for pics.

This is a pore on a beetle wing. It's a little bigger than two blood cells. 5000x

Dandelion pollen 1500x

Framboids in fossil bone at 7500x.

Very strange "something' about the size of two blood cells.

One of the coolest things you can do with an x-ray spectroscopy system (EDX) is map the location of specific elements in color. Shown here is a piece of fossil bone, red is iron and green is calcium.